The last day…

The last day of November. Tomorrow is it meteorological winter here in the UK. We’ll be starting to feel festive here with Christmas songs, our Christmas dvd advent calendar (we watch a different festive film every day from 1st to 24th December) although we won’t put up the tree until 7th, the day after Scarlett’s birthday.

The last day for one of our Rum residents who left the island today. He was here for a finite period from the very start, 3 years of field work on a PhD studying the rats on Rum but has been a bit part of the island community and will be much missed. We gathered at the pier today to wish him well, wave him off and watch as the ferry took him away to start the next chapter in his life adventures.

The last day for Pig 8, who we killed this morning, butchered and processed. A really good sized, healthy pig, netting us over 21kg of meat which is now in the freezer, in a dry salt, sugar and spice cure making bacon, in a seasoned brine making hams and a bit inside all of our tummies as we had pork stir fry and sticky ribs for dinner tonight. We’ll be killing the last of this years pigs on Wednesday and are planning to do an afternoon of mincing and sausage making too meaning all of this years processing is done. Ady has a plan to build a little hut for the air drying of hams and charcuterie.

The last Monday of Scarlett being 12, by the end of this week she will be a teenager. Another chapter of our lives over.